As triathletes we are fairly comfortable with running. As a long distance aerobic monster that does Ironman type triathlons we can be rightly confident that a marathon won’t pose us many issues. Afterall, its just what we do for the cool down after a day out on the bike isn’t it? After a fairly drunken hen weekend with some runners my wife came home enthused about the idea of running her first. She sold it to me as a nice weekend away in Spain at the end of the year, a little bit of fun for me to round out my season. As the ever supportive husband I could only agree to the trip and help her get up to the required distance. This was all before KQ happened and in any case, it was my future self’s problem.
So Kona came and went. I had about two weeks off which left me with around three weeks to get back to running and turn my attention to Valencia. Ok, so the run in Kona didn’t quite go to plan and having only completed one stand alone marathon previously as a training day many many years ago, I was looking forward to the challenge. It was a kind of type 2 looking forward to it though. You know the kind where you realise its going to hurt and you don’t really know what to expect?
I did a few big training runs following Kona, they were all at a decent pace and if I could hold that then I would be over the moon. In fact, I equalled my half marathon PB two weekends on the trot in the middle of a long Sunday run. This kind of performance just a handful of weeks after an Ironman should probably have set some alarm bells off and to be honest, it did. I just c